Zeor wrote:If we ever work out a way to record your dreams, you're gonna blow up Youtube.

Being able to just record audio even would be great. I never learned how to play an instrument but sometimes I will create new music in my head as I fall asleep. It's usually when if I have been listening to a bunch of music before going to bed so there will be a seed. It might not be great but I impress myself due to my otherwise complete lack of musical ability. So I just imagine what else goes uncaptured in people's minds.

I had a dream the other day that I got work at NASA! My dream only covered the first few days there, I was hired to work with 3D graphics, but I was mainly wandering around being amazed. There where huge rockets being built everywhere and I got to see several launches take place right there. Was fun!

Had a dream likely relating to the Auckland housing crisis, where I was staying the night in a cramped cave system with a friend. I could just make out that a big snake was coiled up near the entrance of our cave, so I felt around in the dark for a rock and threw it accurately at the snake's head so I could sleep in peace (although I had a dreadful feeling that there were worse creatures out there). The dream shifted to town, where apparently I was going to rent out the space I wasn't using there. Made me wonder if homeless people paying rent for their space on the street could become a thing. The dream fucked around with programming code for a while, visually iterating a 2D array in a weird order because it was an efficient way to search or something. Back at the caves, I was about to crawl out past the snake. If it was still alive and I disturbed it, I was hoping it would go for my friend instead of me. Then I was in a bathroom inexplicably installed in the caves, and just beyond the doorway there was a horrifying alien creature on the ground. It looked like a cross between a gooey, crusty insect cocoon and a giant isopod. It was the size and shape of a small melon that had been cut open. It launched itself at my arm and bit me, and I saw that it also resembled a shrunken panther head somewhat. I prised it off with a block of tree bark or something I happened to be holding and started batting it around the bathroom. I decided to chip it into the toilet even though I knew it was too big to flush. I made a gallant effort anyway, but it was just too big to fit through the siphon. I knew it wouldn't matter whether I closed the lid or not. As I started to wake up I laughed, because I knew it would get out and retreat to the the shadows, hiding, waiting for me to return so it could launch another surprise attack, only this time it'd have the added bonus of being marinated in urine.

I dreamt the laughable 'band' J Solo Project had two more failed gigs in Auckland (at the actual one last year IRL they mucked around for an hour with technical difficulties before giving up). Apparently nobody had shown up to one, so he managed to jump on the bill of a show the next night (no doubt what he calls 'headlining' but everyone else knows as 'playing last after nearly everyone has left and gone to bed'). I was wearing a t-shirt with a film character that looked like the giant straw bear from Miś and sitting around yapping about movies. By about 11pm the bands still hadn't started and the organiser popped out to say the bands wanted to pull the plug because less than 30 punters had shown up. I went backstage to try and argue with one of the band members, but in my dream state I was too dumb to think of anything to say that disagreed with his point of view. His main excuse seemed to be that he was too poor to afford new guitar strings if he wore his current ones out. J Solo was nowhere to be seen, but by the time he showed up he would find himself trying to play to nobody once again.

Next minute, I was playing soccer, apparently at a professional level since I saw some of it from a TV coverage perspective. I was wearing baggy jeans and experienced limited leg movement with moon gravity because my legs were trapped under the sheets IRL. Considering all that I was doing quite well. The field wasn't quite flat and had a ball-sized tunnel in it. A friend from high school on the opposing team kicked the ball through it and it took ages to pop out. I asked him where it was going to come out and he pointed to a different hole, but I wasn't fooled. I was naturally a defender based on my personality, but at one point I almost scored a goal. Or flubbed scoring an easy one, whatever. It's a dumb game anyway.

I had a geographically demented dream. Parts of Australia were further south than New Zealand and much closer. Apparently we finally got off our arses and built the bridge proposed by Liz Shaw. 10 hr drive from Invercargill to Victoria & Tasmania, great for holidays. In Aus the street was out of proportion and there was a backpack and a trumpet case parked there, and when one knocked the other over the event made headline news. I examined the return journey via Google street view and was soon teleported back to NZ. You could drive from Fiordland up the backbone of the South Island with the hope of avoiding the hicks on either coast, but the cities of Dunedin and Invercargill had relocated west to try and take advantage of the new traffic. Next overnight stop was "Buller", a town still undergoing construction inside a dormant volcano crater somewhere near the top of the Buller Gorge and accessed via tunnels. Still a more realistic vision than the bridge which I didn't really lay eyes on.

I dreamt I was at a fish 'n' chip cafe in rural New Zealand and bought the weirdest items they had, including two battered insects on sticks which I decided to eat first. I started with the head in one bite as that seemed less gross than nibbling on it. I can't recall ever dreaming a taste so vividly before. It was bizarre as you'd expect, but not bad. I was sitting outside, and an insect of the very same species flew over my head, and then another. They were big and chunky, surely traditional NZ chow I thought. They looked like a long moth (or possibly a locust but I didn't notice the hind legs), and they had little white owl-like faces. Their wings were folded in as they passed me, as if they were divebombing to express their disappointment. I cheekily waved one of the sticks at them and woke up drooling. Fairly weird as I've never eaten insects deliberately before.

While Dream17 was offline, I visited the TUS forum more and rediscovered the 'WA dreams' thread there, which must've prompted me to have all these Worms-related dreams:

I had a dream about playing a couple of games of standard/Intermediate-type schemes, one of which was called simply "Worms". Somehow a worm walked up an impossibly steep slope, then took one step off and landed safely on a steepish slope opposite. My enemy made a lame shot and a bunch of worms ended up on a glowing platform just above the water, which seemingly caused the water to rise and drown them, leaving me the winner. Most of the rest of the dream was just about teleporting in to the next map. Last thing I remember was that a worm again walked up a steep slope, but this time it appeared as an Angry Birds sprite. When it stepped off it faceplanted below and its turn was over.

Then I had a dream about a nihilistic Worms match where the goal was to make shots knocking as many worms as possible into a watery grave, including your own team. I'm not even sure if there was meant to be a winner.

In another, first I was playing a rope race, and apparently a guy I haven't seen or talked to since high school was playing too. Then I was watching a couple of BnG matches being played on a castle-themed Bloopy map that only exists in the dream world. It wasn't really that suitable for BnG, so it can stay there.

Most recently, a Wormer friend was playing a super sheep race, apparently as part of a league tournament. The other players did ok, but he blew up his worm and drowned it right at the start of the first map. That was it for him, he was eliminated from the tournament. So he started a thread on some forum and had a big rant about how stupid and unfair that was. Other people just posted off-topic replies about other Worms stuff I can't remember. I went back to watching the super sheep race. The map was almost as intricate as a battle race map with lots of wrong turns, but somehow the sheep could be steered through it.

Today's dream: some performer is on stage at a small bar when news filters in about a close friend of Bono committing suicide, which is relevant as supposedly U2 is playing a concert here the next night. Then there's one car following another, one of which is a white Mustang, a scenario lifted out of Family Plot which I watched last night. For some reason I go to U2 despite hating them and a bunch of people I know are there. Possibly the tickets were free and we like the support band which I can't recall. The performer from last night has apparently also committed suicide, perhaps as a preference over using a free U2 ticket like the rest of us. Bono's heard about this and speaks a tribute. I imagine him giving a shout out to my noise music but he doesn't. I have a seat in the most expensive section way up the side or back of the arena, where the seats are sometimes hanging on ropes so you can swing on them. It's as if they're all about the status of being above everyone else. A friend goes up to the front barrier, reaches out with a paintbrush and paints a penis on the floor of the stage using white glue. A weedy young usher turns up and taps her on the shoulder, gesturing for her to go off to the side. She slips away and returns to sitting on the floor looking disinterested in the general admission area with some other people I know. The guitarist only just manages to avoid stepping on the penis, while people come along and quickly clean it up, seemingly having to mop away a large amount of glue that's pooling at the front of the stage as well. My hanging seat malfunctions and carries me down over the stairs, out the door and about 400 metres down the street like a chairlift. At the end I catch up to a guy whose seat has done the same thing. We figure the ropes have gotten tangled and to fix them there are strings we need to cut and then re-tie. We head back up the street without the seats anyway. I walk, but he's a U2 fan so he runs. I encounter at least one person I know but keep going. I climb all the way back up the stairs. The ropes are gone and there's now some kind of long thin box taking up my seat and the one next to it. There are quite a lot of empty seats so I sit in the one on the opposite side of the aisle. Another row just has a few Sopranos DVDs left in the seats. I work out that the box in my seat is some kind of advertising spambot and I use an app to report it. I reach over and keep nudging it until there's room for me to sit in my allocated seat. I look back across and see that Jane Kaczmarek is in the seat behind the one I was just sitting in. Her face reminds me of my mother, but she has short hair which reminds me of my girlfriend's (particularly funny as she's older than me). Jane says she's having a bad hair day and it's getting worse as the concert goes on. I try to reassure her that her hair is beautiful.

In another recent dream, I was navigating a somewhat perilous maze-like 2D terrain resembling something from Worms, using things like blowtorches and jet packs. The prize for reaching the end is that I'm in the back seat of a car while my mother is in the front passenger seat, and I'm using a pair of barbecue forks to pull chunks of meat from her back and eat them. They're already seasoned and cooked, and she's quite content to go out this way. Freud would cream his jeans if he got to study me.

The only thing more amazing than these dreams is that you remember them so well.

I had some really vivid ones while I was on the pain killers they prescribed after my gallbladderectomy. They must not have been noteworthy enough for me to actually recall them, just that they were particularly vivid.

Those pills were awesome. No wonder they're a serious epidemic.

Zero72, Team17 Forum member (and former Cartoonist), June 2002 - June 2013.

I dreamt that Winston Peters (current Deputy Prime Minister of NZ) was an invited expert of honour at some sort of committee discussion on the topic of apologies. It doesn't get any more ironic than that!